Exile Hunter (38 page)

“How much time do you
expect we’ll have before they come after us?” Browning asked.

“That depends on the
shift boss,” Yost replied. “If he’s the coward I think he is,
he’ll shit his pants when he finds out we’re missing and won’t
be able to think straight. To delay having to report a possible
escape, he’ll order a top-to-bottom search of the mine in the hope
that we’ll turn up before the shift ends at 2300. That buys us a
good five hours.”

“Then what?” Burt
pressed.

“Since it’s late on
a Saturday night,” Yost continued, “you can bet the off-duty
guards will be too drunk to respond on time to the alarm. Even if
we’re on foot, I’d say we’d have a decent shot at making it
through the pass before they come after us.”

The men slogged ahead
through knee-deep snow, in single file, with Linder in the lead to
clear a track. The wind blasted across the slope and set about
filling each footprint with snow as soon as it was made. From time to
time, the men could see the road through a gap in the trees, but no
headlights broke through the darkness. When they reached the first
switchback in the access road, Linder led them stumbling and sliding
down a steep slope to the straightaway where Scotty had been
instructed to wait for them. But no truck awaited and no tracks could
be seen.

Linder waved the men
forward to descend to the next straightaway, bypassing another
switchback. “I’ll wait here for Scotty,” he shouted to Yost
over the howling wind. “If he doesn’t show up in the next ten
minutes, I’ll catch up with you.”

Browning took the lead
now and plunged feet-first down the next slope. Linder watched them
disappear among the slender, snow-laden larches.

Five minutes passed,
then ten, but as Linder turned to follow the others, he noticed a dim
glow coming up the access road from the highway rather than down from
the mine’s motor pool.
Could it be Scotty?
he thought. If he
stepped out into the roadway and let himself be seen, the act could
either save or doom the entire team, depending on who was driving the
truck. If this were Scotty, arriving from the wrong direction, the
truck could buy them several days head start. If it were anyone else,
their position would be betrayed and capture would be swift. His
decision would commit the entire team. Did he dare take the chance?

Linder stepped into the
middle of the road. He could hear the muffled jangle of tire chains
and the metronomic sweep of the windshield wipers as the vehicle
braked to a stop. It was a one-ton pickup truck with a six-passenger
crew cab, dual rear tires and a snowplow mounted in front. He
approached the half-fogged driver’s window for the moment of truth.
The window rolled down. The impassive face in the window was one he
had never expected to see again: it was Mark Rhee.

“Hop in, dude,”
Rhee ordered with the same sphinxlike expression he had shown on the
road from Ross River. In the next moment, Scotty’s grinning face
peered out from behind Rhee’s.

“Where are other
men?” Scotty asked, though not with alarm.

“You must have passed
them,” Linder replied. “They probably took you for the enemy and
hunkered down. Come on, let’s turn around. I’ll climb into the
cargo bed and wave so they’ll know it’s us. When I bang on the
cab’s roof, slow down till they come out.”

“You’ll freeze back
there, dude,” Rhee broke in with unexpected solicitude. “Ride up
front with us. You can spot them okay from here.”

But there was something
about Rhee’s offer that did not ring true, coming from someone who
had hated him so. Though Linder could not put his finger on it, he
decided to ride in the cargo bay until the others were on board,
rather than in the heated cab with Rhee.

As Linder had hoped,
midway along the next straightaway, Browning, Yost, and Burt emerged
tentatively from behind the trees in response to his waving and
approached the truck with joy written on their faces. Linder shared
their delight and helped them one by one into the warm cab with
Scotty and Rhee, but remained in the back as a lookout.

Within moments, his
euphoria turned to dread as he fell backward from the truck’s
acceleration and felt his foot sink through the snow into something
hard and unforgiving that lay along the wall of the cargo bay.
Intuitively, he sensed what it had to be and reached down with both
hands in the darkness to confirm it. He had stumbled onto a corpse
dressed in the coveralls of the kind worn by civilian drivers and
mechanics.

Of course, Linder
thought. So that’s why Rhee wanted me up front with him.

Linder banged on the
cab again with his fist but the truck did not slow down. Not until
they had traveled another two or three kilometers did the truck slow
to a halt where the road passed through a glade of trees and was
partially concealed from view. Linder leapt down from the truck and
tugged at the handle of the driver’s locked door. After a few
seconds, the window rolled down half way.

“Come out here, all
of you,” he barked at the lowered window. “We’ve got a
problem.”

Linder opened the
tailgate and dragged the body into clear view without saying another
word. A few minutes later, he and Browning finished searching the
dead man’s body and confirmed by the identification card in his
wallet that he had been a civilian contract driver. Linder pointed at
the corpse.

“Who killed him?”
he demanded, looking straight at Rhee.

“I did,” Rhee
answered at once. “There was no other way if we wanted the truck.”

“I don’t have time
to argue the point, Mark,” Linder snapped. “But tell me this. How
soon do you think anyone will notice him missing?”

“The same time they
miss me and Scotty and the truck. We were due to report back to the
mine before the night shift,” Rhee answered coolly.

“Then nothing’s
changed,” Browning commented with obvious relief.

“Maybe the time line
hasn’t changed, but when you kill someone, something always
changes,” Yost replied. “We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“Scotty,” Linder
addressed the native. “Did you have a hand in this?”

The diminutive Kaska
stared back at Linder with sad eyes. “It is done,” he said
without answering the question. “Egg hatch later. Now we move on.”

Linder and Yost
exchanged glances and Yost spoke next.

“Okay, let’s get
going,” he declared to the group. “We’ll sort this out later.
Rhee, I want you to get in the back with Browning and the corpse.
I’ll be driving the rest of the way.”

After having taken a
lead role in the escape from its inception, Linder felt relief that
Yost had stepped in to defuse the tension between him and Rhee. As
their foreman in the logging unit and later at MacTung, Yost
possessed a natural authority that was invaluable in times of stress.

The truck made good
progress on the newly plowed access road, taking just over an hour to
cover the remaining thirty kilometers to the Canol Road. But the next
twenty kilometers to the Macmillan Pass were slow going, having been
cleared of snow only infrequently since the stuff had begun to
accumulate in October. Many stretches required repeated backing and
charging to clear a passage. Now, the wind, with growing force,
seemed to fill in the path behind them almost as soon as they broke
through. At last, a few kilometers north of the Macmillan Pass, the
road veered to the lee of a glade of birches that served as a natural
snow fence and was covered to a depth greater than the truck could
possibly clear. Yost brought the pickup to a stop short of the
waist-high snowdrifts and stepped out of the cab. The others followed
suit and joined him beside the road.

“About a quarter-mile
back I saw a ravine where we can ditch the truck and the corpse
without them being spotted from the road,” he addressed the men.
“With any luck, they won’t be found till next summer, which means
our pursuers won’t know where we stopped riding and began walking.
So they won’t know where to pick up our scent.”

“Before you ditch the
truck,” Browning responded, let’s search it for anything we can
use. It’s got to have an emergency kit and a tool box. We should
probably take the dead man’s boots and clothing for spares, too.
Burt, I’d like you and Linder to strip the body. Rhee, search the
cargo bed and make a pile over here of anything useful. Charlie and I
will search the cab. Scotty, why don’t you sort through the pile
and tell us what you think we should bring along?”

Thoroughly drilled at
working as a team, each man fell to his task, and within a few
minutes, the pile of scavenged goods began to grow.

“Yee-hah! We’ve hit
gold!” Browning cried out moments later. “Lookee here, gents!”

And without further
comment he tossed a zippered duffel onto the road. Burt reached in
and pulled out a pair of aluminum-framed snowshoes for all to see.

“How many pairs?”
Linder asked.

“Four. I guess we’ll
have to rotate.”

“We’ll figure
something out,” Yost answered, accustomed as team leader to
dispensing both good things and bad among his men. “Leave two pairs
in the rear for Rhee and me. The two of us will double back to ditch
the truck and catch up with you as soon as we can. When you have the
gear sorted and divvied up, find a spot among those rocks to wait
until we get back.

“Okay, then, let’s
step to it.” As before when Yost stepped in, Linder felt a release
of tension that made him realize how little he enjoyed the burdens of
leadership. If Yost was willing to take the lead, he was more than
willing to let him have it. Merely keeping up, Linder expected, would
be challenge enough for him.

A sullen Rhee climbed
into the passenger seat next to Yost and the truck made a ragged
three-point turn before heading back to the west. When the vehicle’s
taillights were out of sight from where it had dropped the men off,
Linder took Scotty aside.

“Of all people,
Scotty, why on earth did you have to choose Rhee?” he asked
uneasily.

The dark-eyed Kaska
held Linder’s gaze for several seconds before responding.

“I not choose. Spirit
guides choose. I know your thoughts. Rhee is angry man. But he is
with us for reason. Perhaps we not succeed without him.”

“Maybe so,” Linder
replied. “But we are not murderers. If we behave like the damned
Unionists and kill to get our way, we won’t deserve to be free.
What do your spirits say to that?”

“Your friend very
unlucky. He will be burden to us. But our destiny flows together and
we must move as one. Let the spirits decide.”

All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

EARLY MARCH, MACKENZIE MOUNTAINS, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

Mark Rhee and Charlie
Yost returned a half hour later from the ravine where they had
ditched the truck and concealed the body of the slain driver. Yost
wore a somber expression while Rhee appeared chastened. Neither spoke
to or looked at the other. While those who had remained behind
stuffed their rucksacks with supplies from the truck, Linder turned
his gaze to each of his fellow fugitives.

Sam Burt’s long
fingers moved quickly and methodically among the pile at his side,
selecting items he found useful and easy to carry. While deeply
immersed in his task and as driven as ever to survive, there was a
dark and brooding cast to his eyes. Though once a long-distance
runner and fitness enthusiast, Burt had lost a disturbing amount of
muscle mass since their trek from Ross River in December, and
appeared wholly unfit for a thousand-mile forced march to the Montana
border and beyond.

Will Browning, by
contrast, looked supremely grateful for every moment of freedom he
might enjoy and confident of rejoining family and farm in due time.

“Feeling lucky?”
Linder asked Browning on an impulse.

“If we’ve made it
this far, God will find us a way,” Browning replied. “My
grandfather used to say that luck is what happens when heaven gets
tired of waiting. I believe our luck has turned at last.”

Linder returned
Browning’s benevolent smile as he knelt beside his own half-empty
rucksack. All at once, he felt so depleted that no amount of food,
warmth, and rest seemed capable of making him feel whole again. While
he considered himself in marginally better physical shape than Burt
or Browning, he felt completely unequal to the challenges that lay
ahead.

Since the age of
fourteen, when he had arrived at Exeter as a scholarship boy
completely unprepared for what an elite boarding school would demand
of him, Linder’s primary defense mechanism had been to live in
day-tight compartments and not ask what tomorrow might bring. His
motto, remembered from years of repetition in Sunday school had been:
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” It came from the
Sermon on the Mount and had served him well through college, graduate
school, and his years of undercover work in the CIA and in the DSS
whenever he felt overwhelmed.

By living in the moment
at times like these, Linder had overcome the challenges he faced,
adapted to new situations, and even come to relish the curve balls
thrown at him from time to time. Early in life, his goal had been to
put Cleveland behind him, to learn a profession, and become master of
his own fate. He had done all that. But for reasons he still did not
grasp, at some point he had traded his freedom for the security of
his profession. Now, for the first time since taking that wrong turn,
he felt free to chart his own course again in life. By what star
would he set that course? Was one direction as valid as any other, or
was there a fixed standard? If God or fate existed, where would they
have him go?

In that moment,
Linder’s thoughts turned to the team as a whole, and to the idea
that each team member had a path in life, and with it a unique and
vital contribution to make. As Scotty had said, if Rhee was with them
for a reason, perhaps it was because the team required the best
efforts of each and every man to succeed. At that, Linder felt
humbled and realized that it might not be possible to know his own
contribution yet and that, in the meantime, it might be wise to open
his heart and listen to his inner voice.